Snapshots
by Shibara
Summary: Series of ficlets about those little daily moments that happen in-between the really important story-worthy things. One snapshot for one character.
1. Snapshot 01: Megatron : Maintenance time

This chappie is beta'd by **camfield** whom I thank deeply for putting up with my deranged grammar and punctuation. No matter what you say Cam, I know you must have had to use a chainsaw at some point.

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_Snapshot 01: Megatron and maintenance time_

Megatron wakes up early. He pretty much always does, even though he doesn't necessarily have to. He's the leader of the whole Decepticon army, but the base itself runs on auto-pilot most days, so if he actually wanted to be a joor late in the command center, he could. He doesn't because, well, rolling around in the metal sheets just doesn't happen in the mind of tyrant powerhouses.

His systems power up relatively fast, so by the time he is in the wash racks, he is fully awake. He turns on the tap and lets the solvent wash over him as he picks up a cloth to scrub between his armor plates. He generally starts at the upper portion of his chassis so the solvent with sediments doesn't flow over already cleaned areas. Helm, shoulders, arms, torso and legs. Not always in perfect order, but the routine is so automatic he wouldn't have noticed if someone pointed this fact out (nor cared, most likely).

His wash rack is quite simple, like the rest of his personal quarters. No fancy polishes or waxes lining the ledges, nor cleaning drones to do the work for him, just maintenance products and a stack of clean cloths. It is quite a bit bigger than the one he had used once in Kaon, but the austerity of the room had followed him to the Victory. Even as hypocrisy has tainted most of his speech, he never demanded luxury when he could have, something he takes a strangely fierce pride in.

Still, in spite of his usual impatience, he takes some time to finish. Not only because his frame is rather big (every mech has those hard to reach plates. Probably, even Unicron would, if he ever tried bathing), but also because vorns do take their toll.

Hook makes sure Megatron's maintenance sessions are textbook perfect in every sense, but no matter how many replacements and calibrations are made, the truth is that Megatron is old, and old comes with rubber cable-joints wearing down, and having scars and little crannies where dust settles in and facilitates rust formation.

So the mighty leader of half the Cybertronian population scrubs down thoroughly, because rust is rust.

Also, because it is a moment to think.

The rest of his day is spent listening to other mecha, and acting upon it. He must hear Starscream endless list of complaints, the Construction's progress in their current project, Soundwave's reports on Autobot activity (and on what every other Decepticon in-base has been doing), Motormaster's latest apology for failing yet again... On top of that, there are datapads with reports from half the base that need to be sorted out, more projects to be approved, more treason plots to be squashed, rinse and repeat, times infinite.

There is no time to ponder and, as much as Megatron makes use of a practical 'solving problems with a cannon' attitude, he still needs at least some time to think on his own.

Sometimes he uses the precious kliks to tweak the last details on the next Autobot-mauling strategy. Sometimes he reflects on how things will become once the Prime is defeated. Sometimes he plays a memory file in his hud, just to enjoy the instant of calm before the storm that is ruling over head quarters the size of a small city.

Then there is nothing else to do but turn the faucets off, and stand under the dryer until all the moisture is gone.

He subspaces a gun (always handy, cannon or no cannon) and a few other items he never uses but he still keeps about him (Emergency medi-kit. Also always handy, cannon or no cannon). He exits his room, locking it swiftly behind him, and walks away towards the Command Center.

His day begins.

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Cheers =D


	2. Snapshot 01: Cassettes : Living quarters

Second ficlet of the Snapshot series. This one was beta'd by Nkfloofiepoof. Thanks a lot for helping me with this NK =3

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_Snapshot 02: Cassettes - Living quarters_

The Cassetticons knew the whole vent-system of the Decepticon base perfectly. Even Ratbat did, whose work implied being outside of the HQ much more often. It was a matter of pride. Soundwave was the optics and audio relays of the whole base, but the innards of the structures themselves belonged to his tapes.

The war had eventually driven most Decepticons into reformatting their frames into war-builds, which were usually quite large. In a ship-turned-base, that meant that there were many places too small for most of them. Those places eventually became unnoticed by most mecha until the symbionts had made use of them.

Either as stashes, hide-holes, or even as small refuges of tranquility, those places were available in almost every building and section of the Head Quarters. Some were used by all of them, some belonged privately to a particular cassette, but all those in-between places were a source of pride and delight to the symbionts. After all, they were the only mecha in the whole Decepticon army who could truly have privacy, if they wanted it.

Soundwave approved of all this, of course, and he had been pleased when his subordinates had begun colonizing the interior of the ship.

When it was clear the Victory would stay earthbound for an indeterminate period of time, the army of Decepticons living in it found something they hadn't had in vorns: stability. The base started adding structures and expanding, and every soldier began to feel that now they owned their personal quarters. Not in the literal I-pay-the-rent ownership kind of thing, but in the more vague sense which implied that if the mech entering through that door was not MechA, then it was trespassing. They weren't merely rooms where they recharged anymore, but permanent places. That brought in a series of changes.

For starters, everyone started to make each room more to their liking.

Scavengers's storage units began filling up with random items he found interesting.

Breakdown acquired several light tubes to post in every corner, and nothing made shadows anymore.

Thundercracker had begun amassing the ship's largest datapad collection and had had the Constructicons make his walls almost soundproof (which was quite useless when dealing with Skywarp, who just teleported into the room, but a definite improvement against Strarscream's screeching).

Soundwave had used his private quarters to elevate tidiness to a form of art. It was always painstakingly clean**,** and every datapad and object had an assigned place which never ever changed. Also, he had an impressive audio system and an even more impressive collection of old Cybertronian music. Everyone had always assumed the cassettes recharged there as well, docked into Soundwave.

The first time he had heard about it, the carrier had been so amused he had actually made an effort not to chuckle. Apparently, it had never occurred to anybody that something like that would mean he would have to go out of recharge every time one of them needed to go in or out, bothering not only Soundwave, but every other cassette who had docked afterwards.

Recharging all at the same time defeated the purpose of having several spies, and it was literally impossible for any of the symbionts to recharge while Soundwave was on duty. Audial arrays fine-tuned to catching secrets in the silence of the night simply couldn't deal with Megatron VS Starscream daily shouting matches AND recharge.

As soon as the settlement had begun, the symbionts had fled from the TiC's quarters.

An abandoned and walled**-**out storage unit had begun filling with posters of human action movies and eye-searing colorful holograms of whatever struck the twins' fancy that orn. Rumble and Frenzy's quarters was ample; it held a small storage unit for high-grade and energon treats and their own multimedia system, which they often left on, making random Decepticons wonder where in the Pit was the music coming from.

Ratbat's place was small, and the closest one to the surface. It was almost as tidy as Soundwave's**,** and he kept only a few datapads in it along with his recharging perch. The real perk of the place was that it was surrounded by the old engines of the Victory, so it was completely silent, except for the sounds of the ocean outside. Ratbat spent most of his in-base time there rather than working in the Communications workstation with Soundwave and the rest.

Laserbeak and Buzzsaw also had decided to share their recharging chambers but only because they had found a really good place which only the both of them could use (well, Ratbat could too, but the pink cassette wasn't a social mech). It was a narrow rift between two sectors of the ship. They didn't actually know what it had been before, but they suspected it was some kind of ventilation distributor. It was relatively thin, five mechanometers or so, but extremely high, reaching past eight levels of the ship. It ended in a few large fans that rotated slowly, making the air circulate in lazy ascending drafts. There were multiple ventilation ducts in every wall**,** and several thick cables and pipes criss-crossed it at different altitudes.

Both bird-framed tapes had taken an instant liking to it and made themselves at home there, Laserbeak taking the lower portion, and Buzzsaw the higher one.

Ravage had taken an entire engine room, also abandoned when the Victory became earthbound. The large machines had rendered the place uninhabitable for the general 'con population**,** but the cybercat's four legged frame was perfectly adapted to slide between pipes all orn. In time, the symbiont had managed to snatch an incredibly large amount of pillows from different places which he had then scattered across the whole place. Rumble had mentioned once that he would like to see the expression of the first engineer who got in there, if the time to use the room again ever came.

They had other secret places only they knew about but, in truth, they could claim every pipe. They owned every one of those places more than Megatron himself.

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This was actually going to be included in Beyond Silence until yesterday, when I was doing another round of editing and thought "what does this has to do with anything?"

Cheers 0w0


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